WD A and B wagons Beta

[WeaselWorks]

Name: WD A and B wagons Beta
Version Number: 0.1 *beta*
File Name: WD A&B Beta.zip
Size: 5.67 Mb

View Download: WD A and B wagons Beta
Description:


War Department Light Railways
A & B Class Wagons

By Mike Wilson “Weasel Works”

Introduction
This is my first upload for Train Simulator 2015, and my first content upload since Rail Simulator.
It’s nearly finished, but still misses the cargo loading feature – and some tweaks. This file therefore constitutes an open Beta. I’d value your feedback: Feedback Email

History
By 1916, it had become evident that the war on the Western Front had become a battle of attrition. There was a continuing need to move supplies and ammunition to the front lines, so the War Department began a massive effort to create a network of light railway lines from the standard gauge railhead right up to the front.

The A class open wagon was the first design ordered in 1916, but it was quickly found to be too small for use in ‘main line work’ and quickly fell out of use. The A wagon came in two main varieties – fixed sided wagons, and a version with removable sides.

The bulk of the A Wagon were recycled as the basis of the C class wagon – which used two underframes as bogies, as well as reusing the removable sides. (Which will form the basis of my next release.)

The B wagon had the same underframe as the A, but the body was 2 feet longer inside – allowing loads of greater volume to be carried – but still keeping a maximum load of 3.5 tons.

When delivered, the wagons would most likely have been in an overall WD “Battleship Grey” scheme. As will be seen, my versions are much more weathered.

Contents
This package contains variants of the A and B class wagons. They are nominally to 2’ gauge, but my steamroller wheels look perfectly fine running on 2’3”. Contents are as follows:
A Class
These wagons are numbered in the 1xx series.

• Fixed sides
• Ends Only
• No Sides
• Bolster

B Class
These wagons look very similar to the A class, but are 2 ft longer overall. They are numbered in the 2xx series for ease of reference.

• Sides Fitted
• Ends Only
• No Sides

Known errors
I know there are still issues with this project, but I’m pleased to have got this far!
Issues:
• Couplers look odd.
• No Cargo

Related Downloads
This contains coupling assets made by Richard Maxted. You will need to download his skips in order for the couplers to work.

Conditions & Licence – PLEASE READ THIS
For freeware that you develop for yourself or for release as freeware on any website or system, you have an absolute and total right of ownership.

With the exceptions noted above, this is totally freeware. It does refer to the generic Railworks wagon sounds and people but these are unmodified. You may use it, clone it, modify it, rebadge and rebrand it. You may reverse engineer this asset.

It may not be used in routes for which payment is sought or in other ways that might be thought of as commercial. I reserve absolutely the right to determine what is commercial in this case. Charity - ware is commercial but is likely to be granted access.

If you value my work, I encourage donations to the War Office Locomotive Trust – who are making excellent progress toward restoring Hunslet HE1215 to running order.
http://www.warofficehunslet.org.uk

[acorncomputer]

This contains coupling assets made by Richard Maxted. You will need to download his skips in order for the couplers to work.

I often contemplated creating my own coupling and after checking out what needs to be done, I thought it did not actually look too difficult. Moving away from wagon creation, however, I never felt the need to persevere with the coupling creation. On this theme, you might like to consider creating your own couplings for these wagons so that you can freely distribute them as part of the model.

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[WeaselWorks]

Hi Acorn (Bob?),

I do have Richard's coupling and permission to distribute, but I don't like the way it looks especially, so am planning to make my own.

The real coupler is a metal flat with a hole at each end. The coupler fits in a slot at the top of the buffer, which has a matching set of holes.

A shackle is passed through all the holes to hold the coupler in place and that's all she wrote. It does seem as if most stock only have a bar at one end - of course it's easy enough to move it rather than turn the wagon. I might crack on with that now. As you say, it doesn't seem too difficult (famous last words, etc).

Regards,

Mike

[WeaselWorks]

A small update then:



I have my own couplers in the game and working. But they still don't look right when coupled.

The _recieve and _uncoupled are pretty much on the money tho. I'm not happy with the coarseness of the shape, so I'll be redoing the whole thing. Good news is that it has not been difficult.

I now have a sheeted load appearing on some wagons when selected - animated loading is still challenging me though.

My challenge is to finish these wagons off before getting stuck into the next interesting project.

Regards

Mike

[acorncomputer]

Hi Mike

I don't know if this is of any use but it may help. This is a straight lift of text from my own notes on creating a wagon, load animation section. The references are largely related to a particular wagon I was building in 3D Canvas so it may be a little difficult to follow and my representations of the 3DC hierarchy are novel but as I said, it may help -

We now come to the animation section and for us this means the coal or load animation. Go back into 3DC and create an oblong object that is quite thin but will slide up and down inside the wagon to represent the load filling up and emptying.

Name its yellow cube Load1 and the brown cube Load. Drop the Load1 yellow cube onto the Body yellow cube so that the Load1 yellow cube is part of the main group but still retains its properties.

Select the animation tool bar.
Select the load and in the first icon select 10 animation keys at 10 keys per second. This will effectively place a start and finish animation on the time line.
Initiate the animation by clicking on the red cross to clear the memory, click on the load object ro record the load at the bottom of the wagon then move the slider all the way to the right and then bring the load up to its highest position.
Now click on the play arrow and the animation should run to bring the load up to the top in about 1 second. This is a bit slower in the game so no adjustment is required.
It is important that the load goes back to the low starting point at the end of the animation. This confirms that the animation is good

Now re-export the wagon, first using the IGS exporter and then the IA exporter. Use the same brown Wagon cube in each case as the selected object to export.

The main IGS file name will remain as Hopper_Coal_Acorn and the IA file needs to be called WagonLoad -

Hopper_Coal_Acorn.IGS
WagonLoad.IA

Just check to ensure that all textures, including the main texture, have .ace files in the Source Texture Folder. The 3DC heirarchy now looks like -

Scene - (Yellow) Body ----------------- (Yellow) primarydigits3 --------------- (Brown) Number Plate
(Brown) Number Plate 1
Point Light (Yellow) Wheels1 ------------------------(Brown) Wheels01
Camera (Yellow) Wheels2 ------------------------(Brown) Wheels02
(Yellow) Load1 ---------------------------(Brown) Load
(Brown) Wagon
(Brown) Cylinder
(Brown) Extrude Object
(Brown) Extrude Object

CREATING A SIMPLE WAGON IN RAILWORKS - Page 12

In the main Blueprint animation section insert one new animation set. Here we need to show the details of the load animation -

ANIMATION ID = WagonLoad
ANIMATION NAME = RailVehicles\Freight\Coal_Hopper_Acorn\WagonLoad.IA (This is copied and pasted from the tree as before for accuracy and speed)
ANIMATION IN EDITOR = True

NOTE - MAKE SURE THE CORRECT REFERENCE IS ALSO MADE IN THE CARGO SECTION BELOW

All sections down from here to the Cargo Component do not require any entries. The only entries that I can see as default are references to single cabs in two places where there is a multiple choice selector field.

The next section to complete is the Cargo Component.

Expand this to reveal Cargo Def
Click Insert First for Bulk Cargo Def
Insert the following -

Trigger Box - Width = 2.056
Trigger Box - Height = 1
Trigger Box - Depth = 7.42

NOTE - In the Asset Editor Preview Window I think the trigger box is represented and this should be placed and sized in such a way that it is in the right position so that the game can detect it for loading/unloading. The figures in the trigger box above have come from the preview settings so no changes should be required.

Element - Capacity - 32
Element - Bulk Freight Type - Bulk freight
Element - Animation ID = WagonLoad

The final section to complete is Container Component

Expand Children
Click on Insert First
Give Child Name = Wagon Sound (This does have a space)
Provider = Kuju
Product = RailSimulator
Blueprint ID = Audio\RailVehicles\Wagons\Wagon Generic Sound.xml (There are spaces)

That should complete all sections

The final thing to do now is to save the Blueprint and export to RailWorks. The object set filter needs to be set for Acorn/RWFreeware.

If there are any problems then the Rail Sim Developer Docs are probably the best place to look and also trawl through the many tutorials and posts. The thread linked to this wagon is Some Wagon Creation Problems ..... in RW Building Rolling Stock.

[WeaselWorks]

OK - I've done exactly that, Geoff - and thanks so much for the post... But no joy after an afternoon's fiddling.

I'm wondering if TS1015 works differently to railworks, in terms of standardising the freight approach - so I need to have the anim as a separate object?

I've attached the XML file if anyone cares to look at it and tell me where I'm going wrong.

In the meantime, I still have loads to model...


btw: http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 02&start=0

[acorncomputer]

Hello Mike

I have looked through your blueprint and think there are several sections not completed.

I can see that you have not fully completed the Secondary Texture Set details, particularly no Provider or Product.

I also think that you have not completed the Animation Set details at all.

In case you did not know, if you click on the top grey section header bar of the blueprint content (Browse Information for example) and then press the Numpad * and - keys together, then all fillable fields will open. If you do not do this then it is easy to miss a set of fields that are not usually visible. You will see that you need to create a new Animation Set group of fields.

I suggest you go back to the blueprint and carefully look at each section and try again. I think my notes are enough to jog you in the right direction.

Do not give up

EDIT - The attached shots of one of my wagon blueprints may help (Three at a time)

-

[acorncomputer]

Next three -

[WeaselWorks]

Thanks Geoff, good to know I'm not barking up thew wrong track, at least...

[WeaselWorks]

Success! Now, when I click on the wagon in scenario editor, and select the 'loaded' box, freight appears.

Of course it crashes whenever I take it anywhere near the loader. I guess it's a matter of adjusting the loading box properly now.

OK, after some more experimentation, I have established that known good wagons (Richard Maxted's Skips) also crash when at a loading point and coupled to an engine. Maybe there's a broader issue here.

Also tried with standard gauge wagons... no joy. But makes me feel better!